The Parents’ Choice of Non-Vaccination of their Children: Internet Information and Social Media Influence on that

Abstract

The contemporary anti-vaccination movement has reignited in England since the 1990s and has spread out to other countries in Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, among others, with widespread dissemination of anti-vaccination information on the internet and on social media. In Brazil, even with a successful and extensive National Immunization Program, the information coming from the Internet has played an important role in the issues concerning vaccination in some social groups, such as the strata of highly educated and high income families in large cities. This written project aims to discuss the influence of healthcare information, especially information related to vaccination, which can paradoxically generate a population with much more autonomy over their healthcare decision, and at the same time it provides a sense of expertise in the subject, even when facing superficial information or misinformation.